1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a network camera system comprising an image pickup device, and a control device, which are connected by a network, for generating a panoramic image.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, network camera systems have come into wide use. The network camera systems include, for example, a security camera system in which a camera is disposed at the front door or the gate of a house for the purpose of monitoring the same, and a Web camera system in which a camera is disposed at a location within a famous sightseeing spot, for distributing images of the spot to users at remote locations via the Internet in real time.
In general, a wide-angle lens or a ultra wide-angle lens is often used for a lens of such a network camera, so as to have a wide viewable range.
On the other hand, there has been proposed a network camera which has a panoramic shooting mode for picking up images within the entire viewable range of the camera, and connecting the images into one panoramic image. This enables the administrator of the network camera to easily grasp objects in the viewable range of the network camera by panning and tilting thereof. The panoramic shooting mode has been proposed e.g. in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 11-8845.
However, when the network camera having the aforementioned wide-angle lens performs panoramic shooting, images picked up by the network camera suffer from distortions peculiar to the wide-angle lens, such as barrel distortion and pincushion distortion, and the prior art cannot ensure a smooth or seamless connection of the images.